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Trump drops a bombshell on Jimmy Carter

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“On the Holmes Front” with Frank Holmes

The American people elected President Donald Trump last November because they were sick of open borders, high prices, and unsafe streets — and the liberal policies that cause them.

Voters gave him a mandate to stop all the expensive, elitist, Beltway-focused policies ruining their lives and put America first again.

By making Trump only the second president ever elected to two non-consecutive terms, voters said they were willing to see him overturn every move instituted by the Biden-Harris administration.

He just delivered in a big way… and a whole lot more, going back to former President Jimmy Carter.

Trump’s latest move wipes out 60 years of liberal Democratic, free-spending policies.

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order to begin dismantling and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon will “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States,” says the order.

The federal government has spent $3 trillion — about one-eighth of the entire national debt — on the department since 1979.

“What has been the return on that investment for the American taxpayer?” asked White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

The White House pointed out that in 2023, 13 High Schools in Baltimore, Maryland had zero students who tested proficient in math.

“Despite spending $3 trillion over 45 years, the Department has overseen the cratering of academic progress and achievement in the United States,” said the Defense of Freedom Institute. “The Department’s rules and burdens have hurt, not helped, students.”

“They failed our kids. They can’t read, and they can’t do math,” Hogan Gidley of the America First Institute told Newsmax TV shortly before Thursday’s signing ceremony. “This is a failed system. It has always done better closest to the parents, closest to the students, in those local school districts.”

The move has to have Joe Biden’s head exploding.

Biden’s wife, “Doctor Jill,” belonged to a teachers union, and Biden sidled up to the NEA and AFT throughout his presidency—increasing the DOE’s budget and letting teachers unions help keep schools closed during the COVID shutdowns.

“Gut the Department of Education and send the money back to the states,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told the conservative Daily Signal. “Let the locals decide how to best address the needs of their communities. Not one bureaucrat in D.C. has ever taught a kid to read.”

Closing the Department of Education is the exact opposite of everything Joe Biden stands for—but Trump’s order is way more impactful than that.

Eliminating the Education Department undoes one of the most important—really, one of the only—accomplishments of the Jimmy Carter administration, who instituted the DOE in 1979. Closing the department is something Ronald Reagan wanted to do in 1980 but wasn’t able to accomplish.

But getting the federal government out of education is a conservative goal people have wanted ever before the founding of the DOE.

The federal government had almost no role in education. Your local school district decided what to teach and, if parents didn’t like it, they voted in a new school board.

But starting in 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed a bill—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—that turned on the flow of federal funds to the local schoolhouse. And the feds took control. The DOE cemented it.

Wipe the stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump not only wiped out the Biden administration, but also the Clinton, Carter, and Johnson administration’s policies on education.

No wonder, as unusual, Democrats launched into attack mode.

Liberal Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota said Trump’s executive order is nothing more than a bunch “more bulls**t.”

Smith, who is almost as anonymous as her surname, threatened Trump, “I will fight your illegal behavior until the cows come home, and I’m pretty sure the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve contacted my office since you started this nonsense are on the same page.”

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont even claimed it’s Trump whose actions would make the Founding Fathers cry.

“The president is operating in a very authoritarian, illegal, and unconstitutional way,”  claimed Sanders, who is technically a registered independent but votes with the Democrats, last month.

Sanders, who painted the democratically elected president of the United States as a wild-eyed dictator, has praised former Communist dictator Fidel Castro for supposed “literacy” and “healthcare” programs, and in the past Sanders said it’s “a good thing” the Soviet Union had bread lines.

The Vermont socialist’s rhetoric led Trump to call the senator by the nickname “Crazy Bernie.”

But before Republicans celebrate, or Democrats mourn, too much, the executive order doesn’t close the department—because, legally, only Congress can do that.

“We want it to stand the test of time. Congress has to be the ones to do that,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News host Laura Ingraham Thursday night.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., reintroduced a bill in January that would do just that. The one-sentence bill says, “The Department of Education shall terminate December 31, 2026.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., also introduced a bill called the “Returning Education to Our States Act,” which would close the department formally but keep a lot of its functions going in other departments.

When Congress passes the legislation and Trump signs it, he will undo 60 years of the worst policies in U.S. history.

That’s one for the record books.

About the Author

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”